The virus is the first interesting post-historical supervillain

If we can beat it, history will restart

If not it’s end-of-history reruns for the rest of time

It’s kinda funny how people are attacking it with all the traditional virtues that worked against human adversaries in the past: strength, honor, intelligence, compassion, imagination... each defined a century or three of history. None really works as the locus of response.

What kinda works is a bizarre kind of arbitrariness (distancing and masking) that requires adopting a kind of dumb-somatic identity that feels insulting. You’re a sneezing-coughing machine capable of projecting droplets a certain distance. That’s all the virus *can* see you as.

It’s insulting in the same way being used as a doorstop is insulting to a book.

99.99% of your identity is irrelevant to this battle.

It’s not just Trump who can’t bully it...

The wokies can’t cancel it

The nerds can’t science the shit out of it

The entrepreneurs can’t disrupt it

Davos crowd can’t PowerPoint it

The military can’t nuke it

QAnon cannot red string it

Jihadis can’t suicide bomb it

I almost want to root for the bug, the way it punctures every sort of identitarian conceit

Reminds me of Dick Clark receptionist skit https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/super-tuesday-cold-opening/n10215

Roseanne : He gets under your skin like a chigger.

Around the 2:20 mark